I am looking to get a new external HD
750GB-1TB Firewire/multi-interface
I have had LaCie Porche drives in the past
and they have not done me wrong
but they no longer make Firewire
Any suggestions for reliable drives
and the best online place to purchase???
Thanks
750GB-1TB Firewire/multi-interface
I have had LaCie Porche drives in the past
and they have not done me wrong
but they no longer make Firewire
Any suggestions for reliable drives
and the best online place to purchase???
Thanks
posted by:
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 1:52 PMI like the Western Digital drives, and have done repeat business with newegg.com:
tinyurl.com/4an5t9
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 2:08 PMWell, we've only covered this topic about a dozen times recently...
Here are a few of the more pertinent (in my opinion) threads:
osx.tribe.net/thread/4113...d0e29ae1b20a
osx.tribe.net/thread/1e11...d22df39b4c41
osx.tribe.net/thread/8684...64aa4994c797 -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 7:18 PMOkay, as long as there's already a thread on this...
I have an iMac with Leopard. I'm finally getting around to buying a backup drive. It sounds like Seagate is the way to go. Someone recently suggested a Seagate FreeAgent Go drive. I'm looking on Amazon ('cause my parents gave me a gift certificate), and I've found the following:
Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 320 GB USB External Hard Drive: $101.84 (reg. $169.99)
www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST...ref=sr_1_13
Seagate FreeAgent Desktop 250 GB USB External Hard Drive: $189.99
www.amazon.com/gp/product..._cp_e_0_img
Seagate FreeAgent GO 250 GB USB External Hard Drive: $134.90 (reg. $169.99)
www.amazon.com/Seagate-Fr...ref=sr_1_16
The choice seems obvious to me (the first one, 320 GB Desktop), but I guess I'm just wondering if anyone can think of any reason why the 320 GB drive would be either the same (regular) price as or cheaper than the 250 GB Go or Desktop drives. Is there something critical I'm missing here that would make one of the other drives a better choice?
Also, a few more questions, in case anyone's in the mood to indulge me:
-- Is Time Machine what I should be using for my backup software?
-- Does anyone know if Time Machine will also grab the section of the iMac drive that's used for my Parallels virtual XP machine (so that I can back up what's on my virtual XP machine as well)?
-- Is there any way that I can use the nifty firewire 800 with this drive?
Thanks!! -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 7:41 PMIf you get a Free Agent drive - or ANYTHING else!!!
reFormat the drive!
unless you want to lose data at some point....
They come formatted as FAT32....
I just had a client pay me over $200 to recover the data from one..... ;(
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 7:45 PMOh, my. Good to know, thank you. Can you tell me how to do that? -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 8:23 PMApplications/Utilities/Disk Utility > click on the device, not the volume (the one above) > partition > 1 partion and then options. Change to Apple Partition Map or GUID.
But.
I'd recommend using the gift cert to pick up a Seagate drive by itself, and then pick up the enclosure from OWC and put it together yourself. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 8:35 PMBut the OWC enclosure that Jory posted is $120 all by itself, not including the drive. If I get the 350 GB Seagate Desktop drive, that's only $100 for everything. Is it really worth that much expense and effort? (Plus I have no idea what the HELL I'm doing.) -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 9:17 PMIt's $120 because it's a high quality case. There are other cases, too. For example, you can get a single drive enclosure:
eshop.macsales.com/item/Oth...W924AL1K/
$110
The nice thing is it has FireWire 400, FireWire 800, USB 2.0, and eSATA, so it'll connect to *anything*.
You can get a cheaper version that has less capability:
eshop.macsales.com/item/Oth...W91UAL1K/
$68
This one is ATA, not SATA, so you'd need an ATA drive. But it's much cheaper.
Personally, I don't think cheaping out is worth it. For a few bucks more you can get a really really good solution.
And assembling it yourself only sounds difficult. It's so easy my GRANDMOTHER can do it. And she doesn't even know how to check email. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 10:21 PM"It's $120 because it's a high quality case. There are other cases, too. For example, you can get a single drive enclosure:
eshop.macsales.com/item/Oth...W924AL1K/
$110"
Is the only difference between this one and that one is that this one holds one drive and that one holds two, or are there other differences as well? -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Tue, April 29, 2008 - 7:45 AMThat's the main difference. The single-drive version has eSATA, which the dual does not.
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Wed, April 30, 2008 - 10:01 AMI have a question about the dual bay enclosures. Will they work with one drive installed or do both bays need to be installed for this to work? I installed one 500GB drive in one for a friend but could not get it to mount. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Wed, April 30, 2008 - 11:19 AMThis is freaking me out. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Thu, May 1, 2008 - 7:53 AMIt's freaking you out?
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Wed, April 30, 2008 - 11:57 AMYes, they can work with a single drive or as a pair of single drives. But you'll have to change a jumper inside. It's in the documentation how to find and change the jumper. Then, each disk you put inside will show up separately.
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 9:36 PMwell to start, all those drives are USB only, so no FW (let alone FW800). That will slow your backups down substantially.... maybe not a major issue for your backups, but.
The real issue is one of access. If you buy a Seagate Barracuda drive by itself (500GB -- www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST.../ref=sr_1_1 for $112 ) and put it into an OWC enclosure ( FW400 - eshop.macsales.com/item/Oth...934FWU2K/ for $75 or FW800 - eshop.macsales.com/item/Oth...W924AL1K/ for $110) you get a super fast, super reliable 500 GB FW800 drive for ~$225.
If something should ever go south with that drive, and you need to replace (or you want to upgrade to a 1TB drive, or larger when they become available) it you can just pull the drive out and pop a new one in. No warranties are harmed in the process, and nothing was sent in to any manufacturer or lost in shipping or confidential information leaked.
The Seagates you posted.... they might be okay (once you repartition them GUID/APM & format them HFS+), but at best they'll still be slow, cause they're USB only. and USB is teh suck. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 10:13 PMThat and the fact that many pre-fab drives come in ridiculous enclosures that are actually a pain to deal with.
Personally, I think the FreeAgent drives are ugly as shit and the non-buttons on them are unintuitive and confusing. The orange glowing strip is better than glowing blue LEDs, though.
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 11:10 PMOkay, you guys have convinced me. :) I'll go with that Seagate Barracuda drive, and one of those FW800 enclosures. So just to be clear: I can put this together, and then hook the external drive to my iMac with the FW800 cable? Can I then use it with both Time Machine *and* as extra storage space, or does it have to be just one or the other? -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Tue, April 29, 2008 - 6:38 AMYou can partition the drive with disk utility. You could set it up with two partitions. Then you computer will think it is two hard drives. Use one for Time Machine and the other for whatever you'd like. Make sure you get a large hard drive -- these days a 750GB drive is pretty cheap. You could devote 450 to TM and the rest for other purposes. FW800 is awesome! You won't regret it! My TM backups take about 2 minutes now. :-)
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Tue, April 29, 2008 - 7:47 AMAnd make sure you get both a SATA drive and a SATA enclosure. SATA doesn't work with ATA and ATA doesn't work with SATA. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Tue, April 29, 2008 - 5:29 PMThanks for your suggestions, everyone. :) I've purchased the SATA drive and the enclosure. I just hope I don't screw it up. :) -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Tue, April 29, 2008 - 5:46 PMYou'll be fine. It's super simple. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Tue, April 29, 2008 - 5:57 PMThanks, Jory. :)
I don't know if Time Machine will attempt to back up the part of my hard drive that's used for my Windows XP virtual machine. If I tell it to... um... what's that word... not "mirror"... "clone," maybe? If I tell it to clone the drive, will that take the whole thing, even the XP part? Does Time Machine have a "clone" option?
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, May 5, 2008 - 3:57 AMscrew it together not screw it up.......
it is a little to heavy to hold it while screwing up....
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 8:35 PMDiscUtility.app
Under "Erase" there are options for reformatting such as journaling, etc.
Make sure you are choosing the New External Drive to erase and format.
Others can advise you on journaling/non-journaling option choice and reasoning.
I'm using Mac OS extended with journaling on multiple external drives (3 usb2 and 1 fw400) and have had no problems.
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 8:31 PMI have to ask. What's wrong with FAT32? I have a Western Digital portable Passport formated in FAT32, and it seems to do just fine. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, April 28, 2008 - 9:14 PMFAT32 is unstable at larger volume size... windows won't even install on a FAT32 partition larger than something like 40GB or so.
It also doesn't support the same kinds of file permissions as HFS+ volumes, and none of the mac volume optimization / repair / recovery tools work on it.
And Time Machine requires HFS+
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Mon, May 5, 2008 - 3:58 AMHa!
FAT32.... is what that problem was on the last HD I recovered....
It is only stable to 4 GB..... do you want more data?
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 2:14 PMOh, and La Cie is still making FW drives, just not the Porsche model.
For a moment I thought we'd gotten lucky and La Cie had finally started to save Mac users from getting into trouble by buying their products.. No such luck. -
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Sun, April 27, 2008 - 6:58 PMAnd the WORST customer on service on the planet.
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Re: Purchasing External HD
Tue, April 29, 2008 - 11:38 AMI know that it seems to be a matter of personal preference but I've just had my SECOND Western Digital drive crap out on me. This one keeps disconnecting on it's own and is totaly unsympathetic to daisy chaining.
I had a previous one whose power supply went out on me during a DJ gig. That was lame.
This one was a back up of my itunes library and it has stopped working.
I've had LaCie drives die after years of use, but never one that has lasted less than two years.
A lot of people have a lot of hate for LaCie but they are reliable for me.
